From Anne — It’s 1984. Young Anne is 14, heading into sophomore year in high school, and has started reading Seventeen Magazine. You can tell by the way I mimic its perky, season-specific copywriting. That’s the spirit of the Little House Newsletter: a testing ground for my magazine journalism career that didn’t totally happen. To read, print out or download the newsletter, click here. You can also tell I am the daughter of a librarian. Thirty years before Google, all of the information nuggets in the Little House Newsletter came from either: 1) A paperback biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder with a super cheesy cover: 2) back issues of People magazine from my mom’s library. I remember using a huge paperweight of a book called the...

From 13-Year-Old Anne’s Journal — December 17, 1982 – FAIR “Charles is about to separate the kids by giving them to two different kids (sic). Mr. Edwards doesn’t like it so he asks Grace to marry him and they adopt them.” ____________________________________________________ From Anne — What was Landon’s thing with orphans? Walnut Grove was a revolving door for random kids—everybody from Jason Bateman (Arrested Development) to Todd Bridges (Diff’rent Strokes). That’s where 13-year-old Anne’s “Fair” rating comes from, I think—a sense of weariness. My summary of this episode is about as short as any of them. Today I think that it was a total mistake not to send the little girl with the hip, straight-talking wealthy lady. That decision probably...